Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Pottery Barn Airplane Wall Art

I love to browse the Pottery Barn Kids catalog that comes in the mail for ideas. My son's room has been decorated in stars since he was a few months old, and now to bring it into the toddler/little boy stage I'm starting to add airplanes to the stars. So when I came across the Transportation Art wall hangings, I had to make one. They retail for $69.00 each, which is more than I'm willing to spend, but for 7 dollars or so in supplies, you can make your own.

Print out the template for the airplane on regular paper, cut it out, and trace it onto your scrapbook paper. I did the propeller in the contrasting color. Cut the airplane and propeller out with scissors and set aside.

Next print your lettering onto the back of your contrasting scrapbook paper (the letters will print backwards so it will be the correct direction when you cut them out). Since I had 12 x 12 inch scrapbook paper, I had to cut it to 8 1/2 x 11 inches to get it to fit into my printer. Using an X-ACTO knife, cut out the letters. I use my rotary cutting mat under the paper which you're probably not supposed to do, but it's better than cutting my table! I suppose if you have some kind of auto-cutting machine that it would be faster, so you could do that instead.

This should fit onto one 8 1/2 by 11 inch piece of paper. Check your page setup settings before you print, and do a print preview. The font is Bookman Old Style in case you want to make your own lettering or change the size. I just use the Paint program on my PC to invert the letters. You click on "Image" and "Flip/Rotate." Then choose the flip horizontal option.

Paint your canvas, let it dry, and sand the edges if you want a worn look. Then brush mod podge onto the back of your airplane and letters and place on the canvas. Let it dry fully and then do a top coat of Mod Podge over the entire canvas. Make sure the airplane and letters are fully dry before doing a top coat or it will wrinkle.

PS- I got a fancy pants new camera for my birthday, so hopefully soon you'll have better quality pictures on my blog!

Update- As requested, here are the truck and boat graphics as well.

Link to truck graphic (pdf)
Print on 8 1/2 x 11 inch paper
*Note- if you want the tires to be a different size, just trace something circular that you have around. I used the lid of a candle for these tires. I think the one at PBK has a smaller front tire and bigger back tire.